Twentynine Palms

Rating R Formats DVD Genre drama Starring Katerina Golubeva, David Wissak Publisher Wellspring Cinema External Links Twentynine Palms

Director Bruno Dumont always polarizes viewers. Some love his movies; others loathe them. I found his first film, The Life of Jesus, disturbing and stimulating; the follow-up, Humanite, was more problematic, but still worthwhile and an unblinkingly adult study of alienation. His latest, Twentynine Palms, however, is the first total failure of this accomplished filmmaker's career.

It's not difficult to see where Twentynine Palms falters. Dumont's film takes place in the California desert, near Joshua Tree National Monument. David, an American photographer, and Katia, his Franco-Russian girlfriend, drive around as he scouts locations for an upcoming photo shoot. As they drive, they sometimes argue; when they stop to eat or sleep, they sometimes argue - and also have sex. Finally, the couple stumbles upon a carload of maniacs whose brutally violent reprisal sets up a bloodily murderous climax.

In spirit if not the letter, Dumont's film bares more than a passing resemblance to Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, another unfortunate excursion by a foreign director into the bowels of America. In both cases, the directors seem to be attempting to discover what's behind the mythology of America - its expansiveness, its freedoms, its unique place in history.

It's true that Dumont has been uninterested in the usual rhythms of narrative in his films - indeed, his plots, such as they are, are banal - but both Jesus and Humanite had something else: an original vision, a distinctive way of looking at the thorny, fateful world of their creator. None of that is in evidence in Twentynine Palms, which makes the ciphers populating Antonioni's polemical Zabriskie Point look positively Shakespearean.

The dialogue between David and Katia is so stilted and so filled with impenetrable, pointless inarticulateness that Dumont would be better served if he admitted it's all improvised. And then there are the scenes when they're not talking: at times, they sit in the car and we hear music on the radio - Vincent Gallo, in his epically awful The Brown Bunny, does the same lame thing - which after awhile becomes as irritating and excruciating as their less-than-primal screams.

Then there's the sex. No, we don't see close-ups of actual sex as we do in The Brown Bunny (poor Chloe Sevigny, but she knew what was coming), but it looks like they're actually doing it, even if Dumont never moves in for the kill, so to speak. And when they have orgasms....well, let's just say that David is just as inarticulate with his animalistic brayings at the moment of climax as he is when he speaks.

And the so-called shocking ending is anticlimactic, mostly because these nonentities are not sympathetic, but also because the violence feels phoned in from another movie (say, Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl, which handled a similar out-of-nowhere finale with far more artfulness), as if to demonstrate how awful the world is for these sweet, dopey kids who have hurt no-one.

On the credit side, Dumont's painterly eye rarely fails him; Twentynine Palms is one of the best-looking films I've seen in years, even if Dumont is working among the most photogenic vistas on earth. Wellspring's DVD preserves these visual niceties, even if the lone extra feature - a 10-minute interview with Dumont - doesn't add much.